People with disabilities, their parents, their caregiver, and other loved-ones often lament about how, in a country seemingly built on Christian morals, our most vulnerable people are the first to be ignored and cut out of budgets when deficits are being reduced for “fiscal responsibility.” When you look at how and by whom our government was formed, you see a stark reality: that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people was never actually part of the agenda. An illusion was sold to Americans in the form of The Bill of Rights in order for the wealthiest Americans to take control and hold control in perpetuity. Class conflict is what Americans continue to accept as long as we continue to allow our current election process to remain in place. Politics is spiritual and very personal, and we the people need to take control, once for all, in order to truly have a more perfect Union of true equality and mutual satisfaction.
The arcane and antiquated presidential election process, the electoral college, elected Donald Trump as president over the popular vote winner Hillary Clinton, in 2016. The same arcane, antiquated process elected John Quincy Adams over popular vote winner Andrew Jackson in 1824, Rutherford Hayes over popular vote winner Samuel Tilden in 1876, Benjamin Harrison over popular vote winner Grover Cleveland in 1886, and George W. Bush over popular vote winner Al Gore in 2000.
That’s five times in America’s brief history that our own Constitution silenced the will of the American people.
The only votes that mattered in any of these five elections were the majority votes in key states. And that’s exactly how our wealthy elite Founding Fathers wanted it. The number of elites compared to the masses of average means were few and they knew it. They did not trust the American people to elect someone of elite status to the presidency.
Many of the things I am putting in this post from here forward are written in a book called A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Some I have directly quoted, some I have paraphrased. The chapter I refer to is called A Kind of Revolution, and my information comes specifically from pages 90 to 99. The entire chapter, pages 77 to 102, is shocking! I highly recommend you read it. The parts I have borrowed from the book are in American Typewriter font. My own thoughts and words will remain in Georgia font.
In the early twentieth century, historian Charles Beard wrote about his view of our Constitution in his book, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution:
Inasmuch as the primary object of a government, beyond the mere representation of physical violence, is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes whose rights are thus to be determined must perforce (inevitably)obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government.
In short, Beard said, the rich must, in their own interest, either control the government directly or control the laws by which government operates. When studying the history of our Founding Fathers, Beard found that, of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to draw up the Constitution, all were wealthy, land owners, slave owners, professionals in manufacturing or shipping, lawyers, had money loaned out at interest, and forty of them held government bonds. They each had financial interests in the articles that went into the Constitution and in the way elections were held in order to keep the wealthy in power. And he noted that four groups of people were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, and men without property. Beard did not feel the Founding Fathers wrote the constitution to benefit themselves personally, but rather to benefit the wealthy groups they represented.
But it did benefit them personally. And, the four groups of human beings that were not represented says a lot about the mindset of our Founding Fathers.
By 1780, resentment began to grow in western towns of Massachusetts against the legislature in Boston. The new Constitution of 1780 had raised the property qualifications for voting, they refused to issue paper money – as had been done in some other states such as Rhode Island – to make it easier for debt-ridden farmers to pay off their debts, and no one could hold office without being quite wealthy. In other counties, the local governments were holding court proceedings to seize the cattle of farmers who could not pay their debts, to take away their land, now full of grain and ready for harvest. Over the next several years, local sheriffs in other states, as well as Massachusetts, had to put together militias of men to guard the judges of these court proceedings because the locals were coming by the thousands, over and over again, to stop the courts from taking their properties. Many of the men who stood on the side of the farmers and rebels were veterans of the Revolutionary War who had been made promises after the war by the newly formed government; promises that went unkept. Fights broke out between the people and the legislators and courts, and properties of the wealthy were destroyed in efforts to gain some rights from a government who sought to keep its wealthy boot on the necks of the lower classes.
It was the attitude of the wealthy aristocrats that the lower classes could not be trusted to choose their leaders or to make any decisions regarding the running of the government.
Alexander Hamilton, at the Constitutional Convention, suggested that a President and Senate be chosen for life. He had this to say about the classes:
All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share of the government… Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.
The Convention did not take his suggestion on offices held for life, but it did not allow popular elections, either. Thus, the Constitution provided that Presidents be elected by an electoral college, and for the Supreme Court to be appointed by the President.
In New York, there were fierce debates over ratification of the Constitution. This led to what is now known as the Federalist Papers which began as a series of newspaper articles written anonymously by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. Madison argued that to keep the peace a large republic ranging over thirteen states would make it more difficult “for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other…. The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”
But, whose peace did they actually intend to keep?
He spells it out, actually: “A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it.”Who had a rage for paper money? The masses. Who wanted an equal division of property? The masses. Who classified these desires as improper and wicked? The elite wealthy few.
Howard Zinn writes, “When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support.”
Isn’t that exactly what our wealthy politicians do to this very day? They keep things as unequal as possible between the elites and the average Americans by keeping us off kilter when speaking of our rights in campaign speeches during election cycles. They make us feel like we have some control, even though we actually have very little. They only need the popular vote in certain states during an election. They don’t need it everywhere. So, if they can keep us focused on our rights – like gun ownership, religion, free speech, etc. – and make us feel empowered, they keep winning and we keep losing. Even when we win, we lose because the fix was in right from the start.
Madison, Jefferson, and Monroe belonged to the Democrat-Republican Party (no, I am not making that up), while Hamilton, Washington, and Adams belonged to the Federalist Party. Both parties agreed on the aims of this new government they were forming. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers that this new Union would be able to “repress domestic faction and insurrection.”Which they feared due to the violent rebellions I included above.
In the Federalist Papers #63, someone – either Hamilton or Madison – wrote, “a well-constructed Senate is sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions… there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn… In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?”
The wealthy slaveholders of the South and moneyed interests of the North worked together to give all the power to the wealthy and ensured that the middle class – the majority of Americans – helped them keep it. They sold this Constitution, and the protections it afforded to the wealthy elites, to the middle class through the writing of The Bill of Rights. Small property owners, middle-income mechanics, and farmers helped to keep the power out of the hands of the poorest whites, the blacks, and the Indians through their belief that the Bill of Rights would work to protect them.
Looking back at the last 200 plus years we can see how the rights of the average person are truly affected when the elite class has all the power. Most Americans today want protections and funding for people with disabilities, an increase in the minimum wage, the minimum wage tied to inflation, more protections in healthcare and their costs, common sense gun control laws (which we used to have, but they have been eroded for profit), but so far, the desires of average Americans have taken a backseat to the interests of the wealthy ruling class. They continue to pander to the wealthy insurance companies, corporations, the NRA, and Wall Street executives and continue to ignore the desires of the working class. This is, in part, a result of the American people allowing a special group of people to outweigh the popular vote, through the electoral college. We have amended the Constitution over time to give voting rights to women and black people. At times we have passed laws supposedly to ensure the rights of minorities. However, in recent years, with the continued elections of wealthy, white people into our government at all levels, and the growing numbers of minority populations in our country, we have seen efforts to erode the voting rights of minorities.
The recent election is the most blatant example of how the electoral college hurts the masses of American people. Both candidates are very wealthy, but the electoral college gave the presidency to the one who is crude, rude, insulting, racist, and a mega-elitist, whom the American people clearly did not want to be governed by. And, this racist president, as well as the double election of the former president who happens to be black, has emboldened white, wealthy office-holders all across this country to enact legislation making voting much more difficult for the poorest Americans, many of whom are minority populations or have fallen into poverty due to the last giant recession. It has given more power to people who are more concerned with wealth than with the rights and welfare of our citizens. It has emboldened them to further erode protections we have gained in every facet of life. The American people voted for a person they felt more secure to protect their rights and personal liberties, but the electoral college ignored 3 million of those votes. Given that, it is really not difficult to understand how our loved ones with disabilities are so easily ignored by our government.
The fact that the only candidates we ever get to choose from are wealthy says a lot about the election process designed by our wealthy Founding Fathers. For our government to truly be run by the people and for the people we need to elect candidates who are committed to abolishing the electoral college. This needs to be our single most important issue in the upcoming mid-term election, as well as the next several elections. Until we abolish the electoral college, we the people will continue to be governed by elites who have their own best interests at heart.
#GreedIsTheEnemyOfThePeople
Check out my recommended reading post at the top of the menu. I hope this blog helps you to create a more peaceful life. Keep in touch with the following methods: Use the links under the archive menu to subscribe or follow by e-mail. Help me get this message out by sharing it with your friends on social media! If you enjoyed it and were helped by it, they will, too! Write to me with your comments and questions at mindchange4all@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
No comments:
Post a Comment